Ikea Totally Ripped Off Alvar Aalto

I found my old sketch book and was flipping through it and ran across a quick sketch I did in 2003 of some chairs on exhibit in the Pompidou Center in London. One of them was a chair Alvar Aalto designed, and I realized that it looks exactly like this Ikea chair that everyone I know who buys things from Ikea (including us) has:

You see, because I was a designer in a previous life, these are things I'm supposed to pick up on...and faster than 5 years after the fact. But see I always think Eames designed the Barcelona chair (it was Mies van der Rohe! dangit so close!) and forget which Frank did which Guggenheim and forget if Texas soil has too much limestone to dig deep or if you use a limestone slurry in order to dig deep...and these are all things that have come up in conversation in the past month or two!

I bet I sounded so cultured and artistic in that former life... Now I just don't know what I'm talking about. (Actually, what I've learned being in business school in Houston is that as long as you know what oil closed at for the day, you can fool a lot of people into thinking you DO know what you're talking about! Today it closed around $44. Try that out on someone tomorrow.)

Jay's Got A New Gig

I have this professor who's absolutely crazy in a fun kind of way. He teaches Consumer Psychology, Brand Management, and Buyer Behavior...you know, the "soft" side of marketing. He is guaranteed to show up periodically with a new look: handle bar mustache a few weeks ago, giant side burns presently, I heard a mohauk a few years ago... He's probably in his mid-30s, and he actually uses words like "pontificate" in casual language.

So Jay and I go to meet up with my class at a local bar because the professor invited all of us and said he'd just open up a tab for all to use. I introduce him to Jay. He asks Jay what he does for a living. Jay says, "I play drums for a living." I've never seen someone so enamored with my husband...

Well apparently, this professor and one of our economics professors have a band and have been looking for a drummer for a year or two to track on their latest record. So he recruits Jay! I've seen the professor a few times since, and he's still so excited about it. He listened to some of Jay's stuff and thinks he's the greatest drummer ever. He told me he should fail me for not realizing this sooner, but I better get an A for fulfilling his musical dreams.

Gotta Love Houston Weather

Yesterday, it was over 70 degrees here. We could have worn shorts. And today:

That's snow! On a car in our parking lot! Crazy.

My mom and I were discussing today that you know you're from Texas when it's 30-something degrees outside and you just think, "Oh I won't worry about a jacket (or socks and warm enough shoes)...I'll just run to the car and turn the heat on." We just don't have enough of these kind of days to actually take the time to dress appropriately, I guess. Thank goodness for seat warmers!

The most fun I've ever had at an ATM...

Jay and I went to deposit a few checks at the ATM the other night. The Bank of America on Kirby apparently got new ATM machines...and they are magical.

You no longer have to put your deposit into an envelope or use a deposit slip. Instead, you feed the check directly into the machine just as you would put a dollar in a coke machine. The ATM then reads the check and tells you how much it was written for. Amazing!

Jay and I were so amazed and weren't prepared for what happened next: the receipt had miniature scanned images of the 3 checks we deposited!

Besides just being really cool, this is so efficient in so many ways, including decreasing the use of paper. Who comes up with these things!?